An Oscilloscope, also known as an O-scope or scope, is a complex electronic laboratory instrument commonly used to capture, process, display and analyse the waveform and bandwidth of electronic signals. The device draws a graph of the instantaneous signal voltage as a function of time. O-scopes are an analyser of a signal that comes from a signal generator. Digital oscilloscopes are often referred to as digital storage oscilloscope (DSO) or digital sampling oscilloscopes (DSO). You can learn more in our oscilloscopes guide.
Oscilloscopes fall into various categories. The biggest distinction is whether they are digital or analogue oscilloscopes. Within the digital oscilloscopes area, there are several different types.
The oscilloscope is a graph-displaying instrument. It draws a graph of an electrical signal. In most applications the graph shows how signals change over time, the vertical (Y) axis represents voltage, and the horizontal (X) axis represents time. Some of the oscilloscopes featuring additional user-friendly elements such as USB ports for downloading measurement data.
In its simplest form, a digital oscilloscope features six elements:
Oscilloscopes are widely used in industry and are being increasingly used as they now offer better performan